Welcome to the Hope Illuminated Podcast, your source for the stories, science and strategy of suicide prevention, mental health promotion and resilience where we live, learn, and work. I’m your host, Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas, and I am on a life mission to empower communities with solutions that help people overcome isolation and despair and rekindle a passion for living. Each episode we’re joined by international experts who inspire hope and offer real guidance. Welcome to the show! I am so grateful you are here.
Hope Illuminated Podcast
Claim This Podcastby Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas
5.0(10 reviews)
167 episodes
Updated Daily
Accepts GuestsHas SponsorsLocation 🇺🇸
62
Podcast Authority
BetaGoodBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality92
Social0
YouTube0
Engagement81
Podcast Overview
Welcome to the Hope Illuminated Podcast, your source for the stories, science and strategy of suicide prevention, mental health promotion and resilience where we live, learn, and work. I’m your host, Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas, and I am on a life mission to empower communities with solutions that help people overcome isolation and despair and rekindle a passion for living. Each episode we’re joined by international experts who inspire hope and offer real guidance. Welcome to the show! I am so grateful you are here.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
6/6/2019
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62
Podcast Authority
BetaGoodBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality92
Social0
YouTube0
Engagement81
7
Excellent Areas
3
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9
Growth Opportunities
excellent
Episode Length
48 minutes
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good
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Every 15 days
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Recent Episodes
June 30, 2026
Who Are You When You're Not Performing? Identity, Burnout & High Achievement
What happens when the identity you built over two decades inside one of the world's most demanding companies suddenly has nowhere to go? In this episode of Hope Illuminated, I sit down with John Brown — a former 22-year Apple leader who built a secret second career as a therapist before transitioning full-time into executive coaching, performance psychology, and sports psychology.John shares his journey from a small town in Ohio to the heart of Silicon Valley, and the painful, pivotal moments — being told point-blank he'd never become a product manager, watching colleagues lose their jobs in the dot-com bust, retiring from a 22-year identity overnight — that forced him to ask a question most high performers never stop to ask: who am I when achievement isn't defining me?We dig into the science of high-performance addiction, why the body "always wins" in the end, the boiling frog metaphor for burnout, and John's practical reframe for ambitious people: focus on small wins, acclimate like a mountain climber, and build multiple "baskets" of identity so that no single setback can take you out. This conversation is a must-listen for high achievers, executives, entrepreneurs, and the therapists and coaches who support them. For more information on this episode go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/165
June 2, 2026
The Text That Saves a Life: Caring Contacts, Peer Support & Suicide Prevention
In this episode of Hope Illuminated, I'm joined by Brandon Wilcox, peer support specialist, community crisis innovator, and suicide attempt survivor, from Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners, a grassroots Colorado organization serving the state for 15 years through a statewide crisis line and innovative community-based support models. Our conversation centers on one of the most evidence-based, underused, and beautifully human tools in suicide prevention: the caring contact.Brandon opens by sharing his own lived experience with suicidal intensity — a term we unpack together as a more precise and less stigmatizing alternative to "suicidal ideation." His story is told with both vulnerability and strength, modeling exactly the kind of open, imperfect, human connection this episode advocates for. He describes what it felt like to receive messages of support in his darkest moments and how something as small as a text saying "thinking of you today" was not small at all.We walk through the robust research on caring contacts — decades of studies showing that simple, non-clinical, non-demanding outreach significantly reduces suicide risk among people in crisis and post-crisis. We unpack the do's and don'ts with practical specificity: don't ask voyeuristic questions about the method or the moment, don't load the message with expectations or advice, don't assume silence means the message didn't land. Do be honest about not knowing what to say. Do send sunsets. Do keep showing up.We also explore mutual aid as an emerging model in crisis response, the importance of soul care and awe as long-term resilience practices, and why the prevention ecosystem benefits most when people with lived experience are centered, not just as recipients of support, but as leaders, innovators, and voices of change. Brandon's work at Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners exemplifies this philosophy in practice. For more on this episode go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/164
May 5, 2026
How Well-Being Multipliers Create a Mental Health Tipping Point at Work with Laura Putnam
In this episode of Hope Illuminated, I welcome Laura Putnam, author, speaker, and founder of Motion Infusion, for a rich conversation about what it actually takes to change mental health culture at scale. The central argument: one-off awareness campaigns and individual-focused interventions, while valuable, are not sufficient to create lasting change. What's needed is a tipping point and the key to reaching it lies with well-being multipliers at the team level.Laura draws on nearly two decades of experience training over 50,000 managers across 500+ organizations to make the case that team leaders, not HR departments, not C-suites, not awareness months, are the most leveraged point of intervention in any system. Gallup research shows that managers alone may account for up to 70% of the variance in team members' engagement and well-being, yet more than 50% of managers report receiving zero training to support mental health.The conversation expands outward: from workplaces to households, from gym communities to faith groups, with both guests drawing parallels to the anti-smoking movement as a model for how collective accountability and systems-level change can create permanent culture shifts. Laura's framework — Do, Speak, Create — gives team leaders three actionable levers for becoming well-being multipliers. I connects this to my own work in suicide prevention and workplace psychological safety, reinforcing that this approach doesn't just improve engagement metrics — it saves lives. For more information on this episode go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/hope-illuminated-podcast/163
167 total episodes available
Recent guests on Hope Illuminated Podcast
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Gergö Hadlaczky
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Russell Peterson
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Sebastian Ison-Jacques
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Dr Eva De Jaegere
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This podcast updates daily.
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